


Petrichor

by sonictrowel



Series: Long Night in the Blue House [19]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Light Angst, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-11 00:45:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10451217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonictrowel/pseuds/sonictrowel
Summary: At around four o’clock on a Saturday morning, River woke to a strange drumming on the rooftop.  Disorientated and not quite sure what she was hearing, she managed to suppress the ancient reflex to leap into fight-or-flight.  She lay still, blinking in the dark room and listening as her sleep-clouded mind cleared, and a second later she was able to place the sound.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for all the amazing comments on the last installment, you are all the loveliest readers a gal could ask for :) Here is a little domestic nonsense for you.

At around four o’clock on a Saturday morning, River woke to a strange drumming on the rooftop.  Disorientated and not quite sure what she was hearing, she managed to suppress the ancient reflex to leap into fight-or-flight.  She lay still, blinking in the dark room and listening as her sleep-clouded mind cleared, and a second later she was able to place the sound.  She gasped and sat up, the Doctor’s arm sliding from her chest.  He groaned and mumbled something incoherent, turning his face down into his pillow.

She slipped out of bed and walked to the window, looking out into the cloudy night.  Rain was falling steadily over the snow-covered desert, the sound of the drops heavy on the rooftop and sharp and light on the windowpanes.  She slid the window up, just enough to breathe in the fresh air.  It couldn’t have been more than five degrees over freezing, but that was the warmest it had been since their very first years on Darillium.  

She knelt down, resting her arm and head on the windowsill, and closed her eyes.  The air still smelled of winter, the world outside covered in ice and snow.  But there was bare ground around the TARDIS, and when she inhaled deeply she could just make out a hint of something earthy and ozoney and clean, the scent flooding her with nostalgia.

“Petrichor,” the Doctor said, his voice rough from sleep.  She looked over to the bed where he was sitting up, a soft smile on his face, hair sticking out at odd angles.  (He’d been letting it grow wild again.  She refused to admit that she liked it.)

She smiled back at him.  “Do you remember the time—”

“—that I nearly got us made into ritual sacrifices?  Yeah, rings a bell.”

River laughed, watching as he climbed out of bed and walked over to join her, sitting down cross-legged by the window.

“It’s been so many years since I’ve seen rain, I didn’t even realise how much I missed it.”  She shivered a little as the cool wind swept over her shoulders.

“Sorry about that,” the Doctor said quietly.

“Oh, sweetie,” she reached for his hand.  _“Believe me,_ I’m not complaining.  But, this is nice.”

He tugged on her hand and she happily moved in closer, taking his cue to sit back into his lap.  He pushed her hair aside, tucked his chin into her shoulder and wrapped his arms around her, her back flush to his chest.

“It is nice,” he mumbled.  “Cosy.”

“Mmm,” River responded, closing her eyes, listening to the rain and enjoying the low vibration of his voice against her skin.

“It’s kind of a wonder there’s so much precipitation in a desert,” the Doctor mused.

“Like a rainy season, but cold,” she said sleepily, not moving or opening her eyes.  “But there’s no night for twenty-four years, either.  Anything that grows in the spring probably fries after a week.”

“Ah, you’re right, of course.”  He lifted his chin from her shoulder and placed a kiss there.  “Sometimes I almost... forget.  That they have day here.”

She took a slow breath.  “Let’s forget that again,” she said, trying to push down the surge of dread she felt at the thought of morning.

“Alright, sweetheart,” he whispered. He squeezed her tight and turned his attention back to kissing her shoulder.

River leaned her head back against him somewhat stiffly.  She tried not to think, to tune in only to her physical senses, but the Doctor must have felt her tension; he always did.  He nuzzled his face against her ear and his mind reached out to hers, radiating security and calm and love.  She let out the breath she’d been holding and relaxed back into him, feeling his warm presence permeate her thoughts, grounding her.  She just needed a little adjustment, every now and then, to stop the worry from taking over.  It would have been impossible to admit that, before their life here began.  Now they helped each other.

The rain continued steadily outside, the layers of sound filling the dark room, pressing in comfortingly around them.  A gust of softly whistling wind rushed through the crack in the window, chilling her skin.  But the Doctor’s warm lips felt heavenly on the back of her neck, and when he pulled aside the thin strap of her vest with his teeth, letting it fall loosely over her shoulder, her shiver had nothing to do with the cold.

They immediately reached silent consensus that it would be much cosier _off_ of the hardwood floor.  River stood and pulled him up by the hand, but as soon as he’d he’d gotten to his feet, he scooped her off of hers.  She yelped in surprise and they both laughed as they tumbled back into bed.

When River woke again she was alone, but she could hear subdued voices in the kitchen, mingling with the sounds of teaspoons clinking and soft rainfall.  Her vest and knickers had wound up on the floor, and she slipped back into them before pulling her dressing gown from the wardrobe.  She fluffed her hair out from under the collar and tied the belt as she walked down the corridor.  

The view through the kitchen window looked almost like dawn.  Though the rain was still pattering the windowpanes, the clouds had thinned somewhat, and the light of Delta Nembus lent them a soft grey glow.  Her morning-related anxieties still quelled by a wonderful sense of calm, she found it was a welcome sight.  The Doctor stood at the far side of the room, pouring a cup of tea and wearing the ridiculous crooked grin that meant he’d just made a terrible joke.

Milly sat at the centre worktop with her hands wrapped around her teacup.  Her hair was uncharacteristically left loose, dark coils bouncing as she shook her head in fond exasperation.  The Doctor hadn’t been wrong; every once in a while River glimpsed a striking resemblance to Mels in her.  Although he seemed to find their similarities went beyond looks, and she wouldn’t flatter herself with that comparison. River certainly liked Milly better than she’d liked herself when she was Mels, or in her wild first hours in this body.  When her confidence was all brainwashing and bravado, and she’d yet to be given the precious chance to grasp the future in both hands and make it her own.

A pang of longing pierced through the calm.  Soon Milly would graduate and be off to make _her_ own life, somewhere where there was more of a life to be had than there was on Darillium.  That would be a difficult day.

The Doctor met River’s eyes across the room then, and a warm smile lit up his face.  She instantly felt a familiar fluttering, buoyant heat in her chest, along with a maddeningly intense desire to grab his face and snog him silly.  She grinned back at him, her worries once again subdued.  Right now, Darillium held everything she could possibly want.

___

The rain subsided late that evening.  The next day, they gardened.  The vegetables were mainly the Doctor’s pet project, but River was eager to get out in the nearly springlike air.  Nardole had been working brunch service at the Towers, so it was just the three of them.  River kicked a gravity globe into the air, illuminating their little plot of land, and she and the Doctor each took a shovel.  The thin, hard-packed earth had softened into a sort of wet red clay from the rains, and something about the consistency made it extremely satisfying to dig up.

River had become so adapted to the cold over the past years that she had to strip down to her t-shirt and tie up her hair only minutes after they started working.  It felt fabulous to be out in the fresh air, feeling flushed with exertion, with the cool wind on her skin, using her muscles for once.  She would no doubt feel it tomorrow, but even that would be a nice change.  It was easy to get a bit too sedentary, hunkered down under the snow for years.  Well, she supposed in fact they _did_ get quite a lot of exercise, but of a very different sort.

“What’s got you so cheery, dear?” the Doctor asked.

“Oh, nothing, darling,” she said lightly, and paused to rest one hand on the handle of her shovel, unsubtly admiring him at work.  “Just enjoying myself.”

Milly was crouched down, spreading black volcanic soil into the freshly dug beds.  She rolled her eyes before she ducked her head back to the task at hand, but River thought she saw her smiling.

When they got to planting the seedlings (which the Doctor had grown from seeds that morning with careful use of his altered-timestream cabinets,) River triumphantly produced the sonic trowel.

“Oh— _really?  That_ bloody thing again?” the Doctor groaned, badly feigning more annoyance than he felt.

“What?” she asked innocently.  “It’s a trowel.  We’re digging.”

“You don’t need sonic to dig.   _—Not_ for gardening,” he added quickly, as she was making to correct him about its many archaeological uses.

“Is that so?  Don’t you know all the studies behind vibrational frequencies that encourage plant growth?”

“It’s true,” Milly interjected as she walked over with a tray of seedlings.

“Well, you—,” the Doctor glanced quickly at Milly and back to River, and huffed at being outnumbered.  “You don’t need to sonic anything _whilst_ digging,” he finished, half-heartedly.

“Two birds, one trowel,” she said brightly.  “Besides, wouldn’t want to dirty my lovely screwdriver.”

His face reluctantly broke into that glare/smile that said she was winning the game, again.  She batted her eyelashes and blew him a kiss.

When all the gene-spliced herbs and vegetables had been planted in rows in the garden beds, the Doctor lugged a wire trellis out of some corner of the TARDIS’s labyrinthine storage rooms, and they planted moonflowers at the base.

“We can probably bring the folding chairs back out, don’t you think?” River asked, standing and dusting off her hands.

“Oh, I think I saw those in the back,” said Milly.  “I’ll get them.”

The Doctor walked over to River, fussing with his screwdriver, rapidly changing the pitch.

“Don’t know what one to use?” she asked smugly.

“'Course I do,” he scoffed.  “I just need to— what?"

River couldn’t stop herself from laughing as he came near.  “Your face, honey.  You’ve got a great big stripe—”

“Oh, yeah?  That’s too bad, cause I was just going to do _this—”_ he abruptly grabbed her waist and she shrieked with laughter, leaning away as he tried to rub his dirt-smeared face on her.  But it always seemed like he just had so many _hands_ , and she didn’t have the will to wrestle with him too long before she threw her arms around his neck instead and commenced with snogging the living daylights out of him.  

When they broke apart for breath, just far enough to look at each other, he was wearing a soppy smile that likely matched her own, the dirt smudged all over his face, his mad scientist hair in wild disarray.  Her heart leapt at the ridiculous, wonderful sight of him.  She assumed the rest of the dirt was all over her own face, but she really didn’t care.

“You guys are disgusting,” Milly announced dully.

They turned their heads abruptly to see her reclining in a folding chair.

 _“Definitely_ not cute,” she added, not quite succeeding in keeping a straight face.

___

River took the first shift in their bedroom shower, washing the dust and soil from her skin and letting the hot stream of water fall on her shoulders and back, loosening her soon-to-be-sore muscles.  She felt perfectly warm and relaxed as she dressed and joined Milly and the Doctor in the lounge, rubbing at her curls with a towel.  The Doctor was still completely disheveled and smeared with dirt, so she gave him a none-too-subtle shove toward the bedroom.

Milly raised an eyebrow as he disappeared down the corridor.  “Are you going to tell him he should cut that mad hair?”

River gave her a little conspiratorial smile, scrunching her nose in amusement.  “How long do you think he’ll let it go if I don’t?”

“Long enough that I see more ‘Doc Brown’ than ‘Doctor’ in his future.  Though he’s got a much better hairline.”

River laughed along with her and joined her on the sofa.  She had another sudden pang at the thought of how much she’d miss Milly’s company.

“Have you given any more thought to where you’ll go after graduation?” she asked.

Milly gave her a somewhat regretful smile.  “Yeah, I thought maybe... you used to teach on Luna, right?”

“Got my degrees there as well, all the way from undergraduate to doctorate.”

“You _really_ must like it there, then.”

“Well, yes, though I dare say it’s suffering in my absence.”

“So what you’re saying is there might be an opening for your best student?”

River smiled at her.  “Could be.  You’d like to stay close to home, as it were?”

“Maybe,” Milly said.  “Do you prefer teaching, or being out in the field more?”

“Ah, my outings in the field… have frequently resulted in some rather non-standard archaeological adventures, so I might not have the best basis to compare.”

“Hmm,” Milly smirked, “don’t they tell all the first years going in not to expect to become Indiana Jones?”

“Indeed they do.  The department chair never appreciated me being such a _terrible_ influence on those impressionable young minds.”

Milly grinned at her.  “Well, I’ve still got some time to explore my options.  Have a few crazy adventures before I start corrupting the next generation.  Maybe we’ll be able to work together someday, Professor.”

River tried not to let her smile falter as she reached out to pat Milly’s knee.  “Maybe,” she said softly.


End file.
